1850 Riot Reflections based on my experiences. This post looks at the common perception of Dunfermline and also my view of it based on my life experiences, as enlightened by my research into the 1850 riot, and seeking to draw lessons from both. ANDREW CARNEGIE’S DUNFERMLINE 1835-1848 The general perception of Dunfermline as a town…

Verdict on the Mob and the Magistrates   RACE & RELIGION? In looking for reasons why so many leaders of the Dunfermline community had sympathy with the prisoner Alexander Black it is worth noting something the Lord Justice Clerk, Lord Hope, identified. He stated: “That the Magistrates & others may have a strong feeling agt…

  The Charges, Prisons, Petitions & Clemency THE CHARGES Even a quick scan of the Indictments exposes the myth perpetuated in some press reports of the trial that this was an Irish Navvy riot. It wasn’t. No Irishmen were charged with Mobbing and Rioting. The definition of such a charge is that a group combines…

Things weren’t quite like the papers said. From an interest in Andrew Carnegie I knew of the Meal Riots of the late 18th century. Knew a little of the aims of the Chartists, which Carnegie’s father and other radical relatives, uncles, Tom Morrison and George Lauder supported. But I knew little about the Dunfermline riots…

1850 Irish Navvy Riot or Dunfermline Ethnic Cleansing? Part One: What the papers said. Having lived almost all of my life in the Burgh of Dunfermline I was surprised and shocked to read an online article from The “Wild Geese” website by Kieron Punch entitled “Paddy the Navvy”, which told of how a riot in…

The beginning of the end of life as an employee The beginning of the end of my life as an employee. My days of working ‘on the tools’, mainly on trade union, National Agreement sites, were brought to an end following a strike I took part in. The strike was unofficial and we were dismissed…

In the previous blog I summarised my experiences of freemasonry during my working life ‘on the tools’, as being less than positive. But they didn’t dominate my thinking, as there were more good guys (Masons included) than there were bad/opportunistic Masons, and largely it seemed the good guys were non-Masons, individuals who stood on their…

Falling In Love with Nicola!   How my love affair with Nicola began. My one-way love affair with Nicola Sturgeon, or Mrs. Murrell as she was later to become, started on the stormy evening of the 8th of February 2006. It was the last night of campaigning before the vote in the Dunfermline by election…

If Burns lived today would he have voted for Brexit?   Prior to the referendum on Scottish independence in 2014 many newspaper articles posed the question: “How would Robert Burns have voted?” So as we approach the anniversary of The Bard’s birth I thought it would be a good idea to pose the same question…

Piper Alpha: To mark the 30th anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster I felt I needed to write something about it, as, like so many in Scotland, my working life and to some extent my social life was influenced by the North Sea oil industry in general and that oil rig in particular. Oil comes…